The steady growth of IPTV subscribers and service revenue continues on an upward trend in Europe and Asia and, to some extent, in North America, according to the new MRG report IPTV Global Forecast Report--April 2007.

Driving the market's successful growth in the past 6 months is fast growth in Europe, especially France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe; in Asia, especially China, Japan, and Hong Kong; and in North America, especially Verizon, the IOCs (Independent Operating Companies) and Canada. "Our forecast shows service provider revenue growing from $3.6 billion in 2007 to $20.3 billion in 2011," states Len Feldman, Director of IPTV Analysis for MRG. "Europe continues to be the biggest market for IPTV, with France easily leading the growth spurt through IPTV operators Free, Orange France Telecom and Neuf Cegetel."

The underachieving operators continue to be those, like AT&T and Deutsche Telecom, who rely on Microsoft's beleaguered middleware that has been "architecturally challenged" with its inability to scale. The report conjectures that further delays at AT&T will result in replacement of the MS middleware by mid-to-late 2007. However, the lack of MPEG-4/AVC set-top box chips, which was causing a drag on the market in late 2006, has been resolved, and should result in a continued uptake through 2007.

Tracking over 570 total IPTV operators worldwide, the report analyzes capital spending by four regions and by seven IPTV product sectors, including Access, Video Headends, VOD, Content-Protection, Middleware, Set-top Boxes and System-Integration. The report also includes capital spending detail of the top 25 global service providers.